Our Economy

Matamata-Piako is one of eight full and four part districts that comprise the Waikato Region. In 2015, the Matamata-Piako district had a Gross Domestic Product per capita of $50,956, the second highest in the region, behind Hamilton City.

The proportion of the national Gross Domestic Product produced in the Matamata-Piako District has increased from 0.8% in 2013 to 0.96% in 2015. Matamata-Piako’s GDP growth of 2.9% was greater than the national growth in GDP of 2.0%.

The five leading employers in the district in the year to March 2015 are:

Manufacturing

Agriculture, forestry and fishing

Construction

Retail Trade

Professional, Scientific and Technical Services

With some of the best quality soils in New Zealand our district is one of New Zealand’s cornerstones of the dairy industry. There is also a strong presence of other large primary industries such as horticulture and meat processing. These all play a major role in building a strong local economy.

The graph below shows the Matamata-Piako’s five largest industries, by employee number, in 2015, the share of the District’s total GDP that they produce, and the percentage of the district’s workforce that they employ:

*Due to way that the data is produced by MBIE, the employment count for Agriculture, Forestry and Farming is calculated as one figure, however, the GDP of these industries is calculated separately. The percentage of the district’s GDP earned by Agriculture, as the leading earner, has been displayed above. The percentage of GDP earned by forestry is therefore not included above.

This graph shows that the manufacturing sector contributes a higher proportion of the total economic output of the district (22%) than the percentage of people that are employed in the sector (15%). It is thus the most productive large industry when GDP is divided by number of employees.